A book I haven’t read, that has been on a reading list of mine for a while, is Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why. While I haven’t read the book, I am familiar with Sinek’s ideas and have listened to him in several podcasts and TED talks. At the root of the book is the idea that great leaders think deeply about the why behind their actions. They understand their motivations, understand their goals, and understand how the things they do contribute to a larger picture of the world. When we start with why, we ask ourselves about purpose, about our fit for what we do, and we consider our end goals and how we can best approach the outcomes we want.
The global drug war, which the United States leads and forces upon smaller countries, doesn’t really have a why at its heart. In researching his book Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari traveled across the globe to discover and write about the impacts of the drug war on the lives of drug users in the United States, communities controlled by drug cartels in Mexico, and public policy officials from Vancouver, Canada to Portugal. Everywhere he traveled he saw lives destroyed and people left with nothing, not just due to their own drug use, but also due to the policy responses and financial drives of the governments and people confronting each other in our global drug war.
In the face of all the violence and destruction of the drug war, Hari asks, what is the rational for the drug war? What is the why behind the global prohibition on drugs and the global persecution of drug users and suppliers? He writes, “The United Nations says the war’s rational is to build a drug free world—we can do it! U.S. government officials agree, stressing that there is no such thing as recreational drug use. So this isn’t a war to stop addiction, like that in my family, or teenage drug use. It is a war to stop drug use among all humans, everywhere. All these prohibited chemicals need to be rounded up and removed from the earth. That is what we are fighting for.”
I think Hari would argue that this why is under-developed, impracticable, and unreasonable. He details animals like mongoose and elephants that do intentionally use chemicals at times to alter their states of consciousness. Humans, he explains, are not alone in using drugs, and there are some common times when animals and humans will turn to drug use. The elimination of all chemicals, Hari believes, is not a real goal that we should be working toward as a global community.
For some reason humans have decided that all drugs besides alcohol should be strictly prohibited. We seem to accept that alcohol can be fun, stress relieving, and enjoyable, despite the fact that it can also be addictive, harmful to health, and deadly if used inappropriately. Other drugs that might be recreational, are not given the same leniency as alcohol, and our efforts to stop anyone from ever using other drugs has created a deadly war, with rival gangs competing for product and territory, and drug users pushed out of society and shunned from basic healthcare and normal functioning human connections.
Hari believes that we will fail in our efforts to eradicate all drugs from the planet because the why behind the goal is so weak. The rational is built on the fear and egos of those who don’t use drugs and think of themselves as being superior to those who do. The drug war doesn’t fully consider the reality of humans, society, and animal nature to respond to hardship by altering states of consciousness. The why misses the point, so the how will never be successful.
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